Eternal
by AmeliaGallifrey
Summary: Jack, Ten. Grief. Acceptance, almost. Post-CoE oneshot.


Disclaimer: I'm not RTD. If I was, the-thing-that-should-not-be-named would not have occurred in Day Four.

A/N: Apologies to whomever wrote the Picard/Q/primordial sludge stuff in ST:TNG (I think it was 'All Good Things...')

**Eternal**

"Ah. I've been looking for you."

Trainers.

Scruffy, dirty, once-were-white trainers, a pair, step into Jack's field of vision. He doesn't bother lifting his eyes any further because, what with the voice and the distant whirring sound, the trainers make it perfectly clear.

"Well, unfortunately, you found me."

Jack's voice sounds horrible in his own ears; hollow and grating and overflowing with lies. There is a shift of air, then an agile weight, dropping down beside him, then the sheer warmth of his presence, leaning gently against his side. It is enough to break him, again.

The tears run like a leaking tap, and the Doctor is kind enough to let them fall unacknowledged for the most part, although he does press a handkerchief, white with pale blue trim and a monogram, into Jack's hand.

"Who's RB?"

"Hmm, what? Oh, that... I dunno. I found it in the breast pocket of a rather lovely purple velvet suit in the TARDIS. In the err, the wardrobe."

It must be hysteria, because Jack's mouth moves of its own accord into a twitchy, tiny smile, just for a second. He fingers the ornately stitched lettering, and imagines another life; another life in which the hanky, and the initials, could be his.

"It's just a hanky, Jack." The Doctor murmurs, shifting just enough to allow his thin shoulder to press into Jack's own.

Thank you." Jack swipes at his face, and lifts his eyes to stare out across the rocky outcrop to the bubbling, murky pool a few feet away.

"It's weird, huh?"

Jack doesn't answer, just closes his eyes against the Doctor's warmth, his voice, his very presence. So almost-human; human enough to hurt.

"I mean, to think..." The Doctor leaps up, brimming as usual with energy, and in his presence Jack feels old, so very old. He watches as the Doctor leaps and climbs and clambers over rocks, to lean over the seething pool, to stare into its dark depths.

"When it comes down to it, right down to it... you, me, everything... all of us, every species, every planet... we're all just... ooze. Slimy, pulsating... ooze. We're just goo; acids and compounds and chemicals, all... bobbing along together to create... life. Us. It's just... so..."

"Disgusting?" Jack mutters, keen to put an end to the philosophising.

"Well... yeah. I suppose." The Doctor's voice falters, and he looks taken slightly aback; but carries on, clambering back over the rocks like an underfed, stretched mountain goat. Jack doesn't want to feel the fierce rush of fondness that sneaks up on him; doesn't want to feel friendship, or love, ever again.

"Not all of it, Jack. Some of it... some of it's beautiful. Just bloody brilliant, and amazing, and just... fantastic."

Jack turns away. Beautiful and brilliant and fantastic are words which doesn't seem to belong to him any more; words which he has no right to use, now, surely. The Doctor moves again, directly into Jack's field of vision, and he is so utterly familiar that it hurts; hands driven into his pockets, hair sticking up at unnatural angles, glasses just about to fall off the end of his sharp nose. It's too much, looking at him, but Jack is stuck, between a rock and the Doctor and himself, and he has no other choice.

"I saw Gwen."

The name is punch in the gut, and Jack winces against the memory. He doesn't want to ask.

"She had her baby. A little boy, such a chubby little bugger! Looks like a ball of biscuit dough! Jackie. She called him Jackie, Jack. Jack Harper Jones Cooper-Williams. Few too many names, really, but... there you go."

The Doctor has the decency to at least look away, as fresh tears cascade down Jack's face. It is a minute, perhaps two, before the Doctor speaks again.

"Gwen told me what happened."

And then the question skates sideways into his mind, suddenly all-important, suddenly the only thing that matters.

"Where were you? Where... why weren't you there, why didn't you come?! Why-"

"Intergalatic war between Turgos and Irihad. Two moons orbiting the same supergiant. Saved 'em, although there were casualties. Doesn't happen for another three thousand years, though, so..." He trails off, squinting out to the dark horizon of this nameless planet.

"I'm sorry, I'm-"

"You should've been there. You should've come."

It's easy, terribly easy, to blame the Doctor like everyone else does. But Jack can see it now, he can recognise the weight, pushing the Doctor's slight frame down, wearying. The burden of caring, for everyone; every species in every galaxy, however small or foolish or doomed.

The Doctor looks at least chastised, eyes cast out across the rocks.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so sorry."

The usual words, the same platitudes plastering over the whole truth of it, and it's pointless as covering a smashed window with a sheet of newspaper.

"You're sorry." Jack drags his eyes up, to settle on the Doctor's narrow, shadowed face.

"Yeah. I am. I'm sorry."

Jack swallows, blinks back more tears.

"Could you have stopped it? Could you have found another way?"

He doesn't, won't think of Stephen, won't think of the tiny boy with eyes so like his own. Jack blinks, shakes his head, clears his throat. Fixes his eyes, unseeing and hard, upon the Doctor.

"No."

All the air rushes out of his body at once, and Jack is left hollow, and exhausted.

"What you did... the choice you made, Jack... It was the right one."

Jack can only gaze up at him, this man standing alone on the surface of a brand new planet, the blazing light of forever and ever burning around him like a shield, or a cage. It's the first time, Jack thinks blankly, that he can see the darkness, the cracks in the wonder, and the doubt, the horrible, aching doubt.

"It's too much. I... I can't... do what you do. I can't... live forever. Choosing who should live and who should die... I can't. I just... I can't be you."

It's fading, the bright glory that usually follows the Doctor around like a trail of stardust, and Jack can see why it does; why it turns dull and grey and transparent, sometimes. It must consume so much energy, so much sheer force of will, and the Doctor is thin and tired and old, now, just like Jack himself. The smile which quirks across the Doctor's mouth is there and gone, in a half-second.

"You don't have a choice, Jack."


End file.
